Chapter 1

Ethical Traceability and Informed Food Choice

Christian Coff, Michiel Korthals and David Barling

Introduction
The traceability of food and feed emerged as a focus for political attention and regulation at
both national and international governmental levels at the turn of the millennium. The
industrialization of food production and manufacture, and the complexities and anonymity of
modern supply chains have been accompanied by a new wave of concerns around the safety
and quality of the food supply. The emergent concept of keeping track of food products and
their different ingredients through the various stages from field to plate offers a potential
means of managing some of the recent safety and quality concerns around food. Food
traceability covers a range of overlapping objectives, which are outlined below, and so has a
wide potential appeal, to regulators, producers, processors, retailers and consumers alike.
In this first chapter, we seek to establish the range of ethical concerns around food,
drawing from an emerging canon of work on food ethics, and to look at the ways in which the
concept of ethical traceability can enhance the public good of existing traceability systems.
Traceability relates to where and how foods are produced. It follows that it has the potential to
be developed as a tool for providing information to consumers that addresses their concerns
about food production.. As traceability retells the history of a food, it can address the ethical,
as well as the practical and physical, aspects of that history, enabling more informed food
choice. The importance of ethical traceability for consumers is essentially twofold: firstly, it
can help them make informed food choices; and secondly, it can act as a (democratizing)
means for enabling food consumers to participate more fully as citizens in the shaping of the
contemporary food supply. And ethical traceability has a third benefit, this time for food
producers, who can use it as a tool for managing the ethical aspects of their own production
practices and communicating ethical values about their food products. In the next sections, the
nature of food traceability and its differing but overlapping objectives are explained, and the
role of ethical traceability is elaborated.

The Emergence of traceability in the food chain

The idea of food traceability _ that is, the ability to track or trace food _ has emerged in
modern societies due to the professionalization of food production, whereby the production of
food has been separated from its consumption. Food is very rarely produced and consumed by
the same people, but is produced by persons in one (or indeed several) place(s) and consumed
by others in other places. In more traditional societies, where production and consumption
occur at the same place and are carried out by the same people, or where trade is dominated
by face-to-face transactions in which buyer and seller can verify the qualities of the food,
there is no need for conceptualizing or formalizing the idea of traceability; traceability is
inherent in the transaction. This is because knowledge about production practices is part of
such societies, or because the chain is very short and direct. The industrialization of food
production and distribution has changed this.
During the last 200 years, major changes have taken place in food production
practices. Mass food production accompanied growing urbanization and settlement.
Agricultural production was increased through industrial upscaling and associated
technological developments ranging from more rapid long-distance transportation to

1
refrigeration and canning. The regular, face-to-face contact between buyer and seller declined,
although this was not without its problems and consequent reaction. In the UK, adulteration of
basic processed foodstuffs, such as sugar, led in 1844 to the creation by the urban working
class of the first co-operative retail society, the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, in
order to ensure supplies of unadulterated food. Such initiatives have since appeared in many
countries all over the world, and today the direct marketing of farmers’ produce is a growing
phenomenon in many European countries, for instance in the form of box schemes, farm
shops and farmers markets. The growth of these initiatives reflects the importance of
traceability and the provenance of food for participating consumers.
One of the consequences of the industrial manufacture and long distance
transportation of food is that it can change profoundly during processing and transit. Fresh
produce, such as vegetables and meat, is susceptible to deterioration. Products from different
farmers can be mixed or mistaken. Hence, at the beginning of the 20th century, new record-
keeping systems were developed in order to keep track of which grower delivered what, so
that the grower could receive the proper price for his produce (USDA, 2004:12). These were
early traceability systems, although the term was not used at that time.
Today, the specialization of food production practices means that food is increasingly
processed outside the household, using industrial and scientific techniques that are not
familiar to ordinary consumers. For example, few consumers are familiar with modern bread
processing techniques or the wide range of ingredients used in the industrial production of
bread, although this is the main form of bread consumed in many European countries; nor are
they aware of the extent to which olive oil from different sources is blended prior to retail; nor
that a very large percentage of bacon sold in Denmark by Danish companies is not produced
in Denmark, but in most cases comes from Germany or Poland. This industrialization and
globalization of food production also mean that an increasing number of intermediaries, such
as shippers, wholesalers, processors, re-packers, brokers, importers and exporters, are
involved in the process. All of these factors help to obscure how food is produced, how it is
handled and from where it originates.
Industrialization has not only changed food products and production practices
fundamentally, but has also generated new risks in the food production chain. The recent EC-
enforced focus on traceability in the food sector occurred mainly as a response to food
scandals, notably the outbreak of BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or ‘mad-cow’
disease), in the 1990s in the UK and the discovery of dioxins in animal feed in Belgium in the
late 1990s. (There are many other incidents, including for instance the contamination of
Perrier water with benzene and the subsequent worldwide recall in 1990). More generally,
since the 1980s there has been growing attention to the presence of pathogenic micro-
organisms, such as salmonella, listeria, clostridium and E-coli O157, and other contaminants
in food. In the US alone food-borne pathogens are considered to cause 76 million illnesses per
year (Hutter, 2004).
Fraudulent practices and adulteration are other problems of food supply chains that
have recently attracted media attention. For instance, in 2005 it was discovered in Germany
that waste from slaughterhouses, intended for pet food, had been used for human food
products. In Germany and Denmark, the selling of old meat long after it was deemed unsafe
for human consumption, with false and ‘renewed’ expiry dates, in the so-called ‘alte Fleisch
Skandal’, made headlines in the media and certainly contributed to a decrease in trust in the
food chain among consumers in those countries. Fraud in the food chain is far from new, but
with more extended and complex supply chains the implications and consequences have
grown. In an era of mass consumption, serious faults and mistakes that occur during the
production process may endanger the lives of (many) innocent consumers. In the longer term,
such accidents also rebound on the producers, resulting in adverse media coverage, consumers

2
deserting the product, and reaction from public authorities, which may impose regulatory
sanctions or introduce reforms. Hence, it has become important in modern production systems
to be able to trace faults rapidly when they occur during production.
Thus, traceability in its contemporary forms is intended to deal with the growing
complexity of a food chain based on mass production and global distribution and
consumption. It is used keep records of the processing and transportation of food products
through all production stages. It should make it possible to trace a specific product back
through the chain at any time, and so isolate contaminated goods and expose frauds. On a
practical level, the ideal is to set up record-keeping systems that make it possible to trace
product flow through all production stages, enabling identification of the exact origin of food
products and their ingredients, and logging the transformation processes that a product
undergoes before reaching consumers.

Traceability in contemporary food chains

Today, traceability has become common in the agri-food sector. Indeed, since 2005 EU law
has required a certain level of traceability on the part of all food operators in the EU. Other
traceability schemes are voluntarily implemented by actors in the food chain, as part of their
business strategies or as part of quality assurance schemes, as we shall see in Part II. Many of
the problems that are inherent in the modern food system, as described above, can be
addressed by the introduction and implementation of traceability, which is thus used to meet a
broad variety of commercial and regulatory objectives. Table 1.1 maps the key applications
and objectives of traceability in contemporary food systems. The first four are widely used,
while the fifth objective _ consumer information and communication _ is still in its initial
phase. As we shall see, this fifth objective is, however, essential for developing traceability in
the ethical direction of informed food choice.

Table 1.1. Key functions of traceability in the food sector.

Objectives of Traceability in Food
1. Risk management and food safety
• Risk assessment: mapping of foods and feed, food ingredients and processing technologies
that have food safety implication (e.g. hygiene);
• Food residue surveillance: food sampling at appropriate points testing for residues, e.g.
pesticides;
• Public health recall systems: identification of breakdowns in food safety along the food supply
chain, allowing recall of contaminated products for the purpose of protecting public health.
2. Control and verification
• Surveillance and auditing of producer and retailer activities;
• Avoidance of fraud and theft: control of products by chemical and molecular approaches
(biological ‘food-prints’);
• Identification of responsible actors (but also claims of innocence!);
• Ingredients definition;
• Avoidance of negative claims (e.g. ‘may contain GMO traces’).
3. Supply chain management and efficiency
• Cost effective management of the supply chain;
• Computerized stock inventory and ordering systems linked to point of sale;
• Just-in-time delivery systems;
• Efficient use of resources (cost minimization).
4. Provenance and quality assurance of products
• Marketing of health, ethical and other claims;
• Authenticity: identity of the product (food authentication) and the producer;
• Typicality: as with European schemes for Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and
Protected Geographical Indication (PGI);

3
 Protected Geographical Indication (PGI);
• Quality assurance of standards at different stages of production and/or processing (e.g.
environmental protocols for production);
• Final product quality assurance.
5. Information and Communication to the Consumer
• Transparency of the production history;
• Facilitation of informed food choice, through transparency and the ability to compare different
products;
• Recognition of specific consumers concerns and information demands – where such concerns
and demands are not static but may evolve;
• Public participation; consumer services, companies’ ‘care lines’ and consultation to obtain
consumer feedback.

Five objectives can be distinguished, even though there are some overlaps between
them. The first category, risk management and food safety, has been a primary focus of
regulatory attempts to introduce traceability. Food safety control has been built upon process-
based auditing, such as HACCP (Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points) standards and
the International Organisation for Standardisation ISO 9000 (traceability is mentioned in ISO
9001:2000 as one aspect to be considered in quality management systems). The need to be
able to recall contaminated products for public health reasons motivated food producers to
incorporate traceability systems into supply chain management processes originally
implemented to achieve efficiencies (Farm Foundation, 2004:8). The latter – supply chain
management and efficiency – is the third category in Table 1.1, and its main concern is to
allow food companies, notably the corporate retailers, to manage the flow of goods and
information, link inventory to consumer purchasing, set product specifications for growers
and processors under contract, and so on, in order to meet market demand and secure the
efficient use of resources. Traceability is thus an instrument that can be deployed for a variety
of purposes, often at the same time. Hence in practice there will usually be some overlap
between the different categories depicted in Table 1.1, and traceability will rarely if ever be
implemented for only one of the objectives mentioned. For example, the second category
interweaves with the other two mentioned above. Keeping a record of the production history
of a product can be used for surveillance and fraud prevention. It is interesting to observe that
the two largest retail companies of the world, Wal-Mart and Carrefour, are increasingly
asking for complete traceability from their suppliers (Bantham and Duval, 2004).
The fourth category is likewise linked to the second, as it concerns verification of
quality claims and label schemes. Quality is a complex term, as the perception and
dimensions of quality are continually shifting (an example would be the multiple uses and
perceptions of the term ‘fresh’). But the goals of traceability as set out in the fourth category
can to some extent reflect ethical criteria for food production practices and also consumers’
ethical concerns, and communicate them via labels. Four examples, out of many labelling
schemes, are: the organic labels found in most European countries, the UK Red Tractor
scheme, the UK Royal Society for the Protection of Animals’ (RSPCA) Freedom Food label,
and the French Label Rouge. Increasingly, quality parameters of an ethical nature are
integrated into supermarkets’ own brands. However, we should note that this book does not
directly address labelling. A motivating and decisive factor for taking up the idea of ethical
traceability in this book was a growing awareness of the limits of labels; that they are
symbolic representations of often rather huge quantities of information, which are rarely
communicated to consumers and which are not accessible to ordinary consumers. Moreover,
labels can in some cases create more confusion than enlightenment. This was shown in a
European study called Welfare Quality on food labels in relation to animal welfare. The study
showed that there were huge differences between labels in different EU countries and that

4
there was disagreement as to definitions of animal welfare standards (Welfare Quality, 2005).
In the light of the shortcomings of labels, ethical traceability was from the outset conceived as
an alternative that could provide more complete information to consumers and thus respond
more efficiently to consumers’ ethical concerns (these are discussed in more detail later in this
chapter).
The fifth category of objectives for traceability is far from fully developed. In some
ways it is an aspiration that would facilitate consumers’ understanding of food production
practices and their ability to make informed choices about the foodstuffs they purchase and
eat. It concerns the communication of production practices in the food chain. The term
communication is not restricted here to information flows between producers, retailers and
food authorities, but also includes making information available to consumers. In this sense,
traceability is about visibility; it is about making the production history of food visible to the
eyes of the consumers. It allows producers and retailers to establish a more advanced kind of
communication with consumers about production practices. This more detailed
communication could facilitate more informed choice by consumers.
The fourth category allows for some of these aspirations to be met, but the
communication is shaped by the producers and/or the retailers (in some assurance schemes)
and by the processors (in the EU’s geographical origin schemes, the Protected Designations of
Origin, PDO, and Protected Geographical Indications, PGI). The fifth category envisions
more responsive and transparent systems, where traceability links to the ethics of food
production practices.
This book concentrates on the fourth and fifth categories of traceability, as we seek to
develop the idea of ethical traceability. It is, however, important to understand the different
uses of traceability and to see it in its broad context, to get an idea of how the term has
developed and how it is being used at present. Our focus on the ethical dimensions of
traceability also means that this book does not include technical matters or enabling
technologies for traceability (but see Annex 1 to Chapter 13 for a discussion of some
technological approaches to ethical traceability). The technical enabling of traceability is
developing very rapidly in the current climate, seeking to deliver with greater and more rapid
precision an expanding range of features. Traceability may involve keeping track of hundreds
of inputs and processes, and the systems required to handle and transmit of all this data need
to be highly sophisticated. Most of the information in traceability systems would be irrelevant
to consumers, as it concerns matters that are of interest only to actors in the supply chain. For
instance, details about the moisture content of a consignment of wheat and the variety of grain
used are essential to flour millers, who need the information to make decisions about how to
process the grain and what type of flour to turn it into. Consumers will want to know what
sort of flour they are buying, but in many cases are not interested in the technical details
leading to the production of that type of flour.
The different uses to which traceability can be put has led several authors to speak of
traceability as a tool (among others Clemens, 2003:3; EU Standing Committee on the Food
chain and Animal Health, 2004:10; USDA, 2004:3, Farm Foundation, 2004:22, CIES, 2005:6,
GS1, 2006:6-8). So, looking at traceability from a different perspective from that presented in
Table 1.1, three categories of traceability as a tool can be distinguished:

1. Management tool
Purpose: Supply chain management and internal management of resources in co-operations.

2. Government tool
Purpose: Political and administrative government of the food chain, anti-fraud measures and
verification of product attributes and liability.

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3. Communication tool
‘Value-capture’ of food qualities (such as animal welfare) for the purpose of informing
consumers.

In this book we focus on traceability as a tool for informing and communicating with
consumers on ethical concerns. This aspect of traceability is mentioned in several reports on
traceability, but has so far never been treated in depth (see among others Food Strategy
Division and Food Standards Agency, 2002:2; Farm Foundation, 2004:8; USDA, 2004:9).
To some extent, all traceability is ethical. Food safety is obviously an ethical issue
since it aims at protecting consumers from food-borne diseases and pollution. Preventing
fraud in the food chain is likewise inherently ethical, as is guaranteeing the accuracy of the
information provided to consumers, and the verification of assurance and labelling schemes.
However, it is at the communication level that specifically ‘ethical’ traceability gains a certain
power. For actors in the food chain (be they processors, manufacturers or retailers) who wish
to secure a minimum level of ethical behaviour among their suppliers, ethical traceability
provides information on the ethics of a given product’s production history, which is essential
if the buyer is to be able to form an ethical judgement of the supplier (see Coff, 2006, for a
description of the link between food ethics and food production histories). And the same goes
for consumers: ethical traceability should provide the information necessary for consumers to
exercise their ethical judgement about the production history of a given food, and thus allow
consumers’ informed choice. Such information is vital to ethical consumers who are
concerned about the impact of food production on issues such as animal welfare, working
conditions, the environment and sustainability.
The different uses of traceability make it a potential battlefield. There is widespread
agreement that the need for fully documented traceability systems within the food chain has
never been stronger (Morrison, 2003:459), but there is tremendous disagreement about the
purpose of introducing traceability and about which aspects of production should be
incorporated in traceability systems. These arguments about how to make use of traceability
in supply chains expose disagreements about the role of food ethics in production practices.
Many of these issues are discussed in ensuing chapters of this book.

Ethics, traceability and food

Most people are aware that in recent decades massive changes have taken place in agricultural
and food production practices. This is clear not only from the radical changes that can be
observed in the landscape and the bewildering array of goods available in contemporary
supermarkets, but also from media headlines. Media coverage of food production practices
tends to highlight negative aspects, such as food scandals, environmental and animal welfare
problems, and so forth.
The physical, social and mental separation of production and consumption, which is
characteristic of modern societies, means that in most cases producers and consumers do not
know each other and that consumers do not know what happens during production processes.
They are invisible to one another. In spite of this differentiation of the two spheres, and the
obscurity of the food system, people, as citizens and consumers, may still seek to feel that
they somehow are involved in agriculture and food production. Or, at least, that food
production practices matter, in the sense that it makes a difference to consumer-citizens if
food is produced in one way as opposed to another. But how can food production practices
matter, even though production has been so clearly separated from consumption?
There is an old saying that ‘if you eat, you are involved in agriculture’. Shopping,
preparing and eating are key notions for understanding the involvement of consumers in the

6
agri-food sector. These three activities are acts that lead the thoughts in two different
directions. We could say that our thoughts are led both backwards and forwards in time.
Shopping, preparing and eating are, so to speak, specific points in a chain of events, from
which it is possible to think both backwards and forwards. We think backwards when we
consider what we are buying, preparing and eating. We cannot ascertain if something is
edible, and for instance whether it is meat or a vegetable, without relating our sensuous
perception to our knowledge of what is meat and what is a vegetable. We have an idea of
what is meat and what is a vegetable, and from our experience we judge them to be either
edible or non-edible. Now, this experience is often associated with many different stories.
One very simple story is that meat comes from living animals. For some people, this
knowledge is very important (vegetarians, for instance). This simple illustration shows how,
in the act of eating, we consciously or unconsciously direct our thoughts towards the past.
We also direct our thoughts towards the future, when considering how a food will
affect our bodies. Food is taken into the body. It is incorporated and incarnated. In this sense,
food links our body with past events in the agri-food sector in a very physical sense. But we
might also consider the pleasure of the food (taste, digestibility, effect on the mental state, and
so forth), the healthiness of the food, and the social and cultural contexts of shopping, cooking
and eating. With the food we choose, we make a statement about our identity and connect
ourselves with other people who make the same kind of food choices. Vegetarianism, or
whatever kind of diet we choose, is as much about belonging to certain groups as about
eating. This gives some idea of why production practices in the agri-food sector still matter
for many people, despite the separation of production and consumption. Highlighting the link
between consumers’ activities and the production history of foods takes us to the central
theme of the book: that is, traceability. To return to the meaning of the concept, it refers to the
history of a product and the records kept of that history.1 Thus, traceability seems to offer the
possibility of making the link between production and consumption visible. As mentioned
earlier, traceability is already a requirement of EU food law (regulation (EC) No 178/2002).
Thus all European food businesses have a legal responsibility to implement traceability. The
question raised in this book is: can this traceability be used to provide ethical information to
consumers about the production history of foods, and thereby enable consumers to make
informed choices on ethical issues?
A central concern, then, is how traceability can link to food ethics. That is why we
have introduced the term ‘ethical traceability’. Food ethics is a discipline that embraces many
different ethical and philosophical studies on food. However, it is not just an academic
discipline; it also describes more practical ways in which people think about food and act
according to their values of right, injustice or good and bad in food production. At present
there are roughly four main research areas within food ethics, presented in Table 1.2.

Table 1.2: Research areas in food ethics.

Research areas in food ethics
1. Food security deals with the just and fair supply of food to human beings. With more
than 800 million starving or undernourished people in the world, this is probably the most
pressing ethical question.

1
The internationally most recognized definition of traceability belongs to ISO. ISO 9000:2000 refers
to a set of quality management standards. To this set belongs ISO 8402. This standard defines
traceability as ‘the ability to trace the history, application or location of an entity by means of recorded
identifications. More recently ISO has defined traceability in terms of management: ‘A Traceability
system is a useful tool to assist an organization operating within a feed and food chain to achieve
defined objectives in a management system’ (ISO, 2007: iv).

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 2. Food safety deals with the safety of the food: food should not endanger the health of
consumers due to pathogens or pollution present in the food. There are ongoing discussions
about what is safe enough and whose definition of safety should be followed.
3. New developments in nutritional research and technology, such as personalized
nutrition, functional foods and health foods, challenge existing norms and values about
food. This also includes food-related diseases such as obesity, cardio-vascular diseases and
cancer and their association with food culture, because they raise issues of responsibility
and respect for ‘non-healthy’ life-styles and production methods.
4. Ethical questions raised by specific production practices and conditions in the food
chain. This concerns animal welfare, the environment, sustainability, working conditions,
use of new (bio and nano) technology, research ethics, and so forth. These ethics relate to
the production history of the food, that is how and under what conditions it was produced.

Traceability is about keeping track of the history of the food. Ethical traceability is about
keeping track of the ethical aspects of food production practices and the conditions under
which the food is produced. Ethical traceability is a means of capturing and mapping values
and processes in the food production chain. It can be used as a verification process of the
methods and practices used, in response to consumers’ ethical concerns. It can be defined in
the following way:

Ethical traceability is the ability to trace and map ethical aspects of the food chain by
means of recorded identifications

Once the information on the ethical aspects of production practices has been captured and
mapped, it can be used to communicate with interested stakeholders in the food chain,
including producers, processors, retailers and consumers. It can be used as part of the ‘value-
capture’ of products and also to enable stakeholders to make choices consistent with their own
values. Tim Lang, co-author of Chapter 6, discerns a movement away from ‘value for
money’, the idea that price is the fundamental determinant of choice, towards ‘values for
money’, reflecting the notion that consumers are more than just wallets on legs, but are also
citizens who will select and reward companies that behave in socially responsible ways
(Lang, 2007).

Consumers’ ethical concerns

Based on work by the philosopher Michiel Korthals in the initial phase of the project, 10 main
ethical concerns relevant to food production were identified (see Table 1.3). These 10
concerns were used to structure some of the philosophical work, and especially to structure
the interviews used in the empirical research presented in Part II. The 10 concerns can be
divided into two categories. First, consumers have substantive concerns about the first seven
ethical issues while shopping for food. These are issues that relate directly to the
consequences of production practices or to the consequences or impacts of food consumption,
for instance human health and food quality. They are substantive in that they are a matter of
substance rather than a matter of procedure; we could also term them vertical or specific
concerns. This leads to the second category, the procedural concerns, which includes the last
three ethical issues listed. Procedural refers in this context to the communicative aspects of
information sharing, feedback and listening procedures, participatory methods and co-
production. They are procedural in the sense that they are not matters of substance, but are

8
horizontal and cut across the various substantive or vertical concerns. They are about access
to and availability of information, the reliability of information, and the opportunity for
consumers to have a voice on the substantive concerns. The two categories are of a different
nature and therefore they raise different problems and demand different solutions.
Furthermore, each concern may embody more than ethics, and each concern may be
interlinked with others from the list. For instance, is ‘origin and place’ a concern that works
differently from ‘terms of trade’? ‘Origin and place’ may not necessarily be an ethical
parameter, but people make a lot of associations with origin and place that involve ethical
judgements. Equally, ‘origin and place’ may be linked to concerns around ‘working
conditions’, such as with food from developing countries. Also, trust is a complex concern
that seems to be interlinked with the other procedural concerns of transparency, voice and
participation.

Table 1.3. 10 ethical consumer concerns relevant to food production, used as a basis for
the studies in this book.
1. Animal welfare
2. Human health
3. Methods of production and processing and their impact (e.g., environmental,
landscape)
4. Terms of trade (fair price, etc.)
5. Working conditions
6. Quality (intrinsic qualities such as taste, composition, etc.)
7. Origin and place
8. Trust
9. Voice (participation)
10. Transparency

Informed food choice

Ethical consumption mixes the role of consumer with that of citizen. The term ‘consumer-
citizen’ refers to this duality (see for instance the Consumer Citizenship Network and
Scammell, 2003). Clive Barnett and his colleagues (2005:4-5) consider consumer-oriented
activism as a pathway to participation for ordinary people. Ethical consumption is a
reconfiguration of the consumer’s role, merging it with the citizen’s role. The majority of
consumers subscribe to at least one of the 10 ethical concerns listed above. From a recent
attitudinal survey we know that in Europe 60% of the population is worried about animal
welfare when prompted (European Commission, 2006:28). However, in this study only a
minority subscribed to two or more of the concerns.
Empirical sociology and psychology have taught us that there is often a gap between
people’s attitudes and their behaviour. Consumers’ concerns as measured in surveys do not
always translate into actual food purchasing behaviour. This means that even if consumers
express concerns about animal welfare (attitude) they will not necessarily purchase meat
selectively (behaviour). Many factors contribute to this gap. For instance, it can be difficult to
shop according to individual values due to a lack of reliable information or a lack of trust in
the food system. Economic constraints or lack of easy access to food with the desired ethical
attributes can also act as barriers. In Figure 1.1 we have listed some of the major issues that
influence consumers’ food choice (in a simplified form, as there may be many more). From
the figure it is clear that choosing food is not a simple matter, and that many different and
opposing interests must be weighed against each other. The priority given to different

9
interests may vary over time, depending on the situation, the mood of the consumer or the
social contexts at the moment of shopping.

Social
Culture context, care Identity
and for relatives
tradition

Price
Prestige

Consumers’ Consumer
Food Choice perception of
Information quality, taste
and aesthetics

Voice
Availability,
Ethics of the convenience
production Health
history: consumer
concerns

Figure 1.1. Some factors affecting consumers’ food choice.

Some of the issues in Figure 1.1 are related to self-interest. Price, quality, taste, prestige,
health and convenience can all be part of self-interested considerations around the ‘best buy’.
Purely self-interested considerations can, in fact, be said to lack any ethical reflection and
awareness, since they entail no concern for others. The ethical dimension of food purchase is
opened when food is bought not only for one’s own satisfaction, but also to take into
consideration the needs of others.
Barnett and his colleagues (2005:99) speak of caring at a distance, because the others
that we take into consideration or show care for in ethical consumption are not necessarily
people we encounter face to face, but may be distant from us. The problem with such an
approach to showing care is that it is often assumed that the consequences of our actions are
unintelligible, as they are hidden by the ‘space’ in between. There are different approaches on
how to make the long-range ethics required to care for these distant others functional. For
instance, it has been proposed that long-range ethics could be based on short-range ethics
(face-to-face interaction) by making the distant consequences visible (Coff, 2006:100). The
intention behind such a strategy is to let food production practices appear in narrative forms,
as stories, or production (hi)stories, so that consumer-citizens can take a stance on them and
the consequences can be made explicit.
Whichever way ethical consumption is carried out and whatever strategy is used, it
needs some degree of concerted action by organizations, institutions, consumers, and so forth

10
(Barnett et al., 2004:8). As an individual consumer it can be impossible to gain access to the
ethical information desired (see for instance Coff, 2006:175 for such an attempt). Co-
operation among actors in the chain is necessary to ensure access to the necessary
information. In a dynamic fashion, feedback from consumers to producers and processors
may enhance the development of new and ‘more ethical’ food production practices.
Mobilization of consumer support for ethical trading and consumption can also be promoted
by organizational efforts, such as campaigns. The nature of the agencies involved and the
collective organizations that serve as the mediators of engagement and participation are also
important (Barnett et al., 2005:7). In Chapter 13 of this book the organizational aspects of
ethical traceability are developed in more detail.
Some issues in Figure 1.1 are related to sociological and cultural aspects of food
production and consumption. For instance, it is clear that food choice is linked to culture,
social class and tradition. The selection of food – the matter or ‘environment’ to be
incorporated in one’s own body – confers identity not only through the social context in
which it takes place but also, on a more individual level, through selection of particular foods,
such as the avoidance of meat, preferences for organic food or animal-friendly meat, one’s
own particular preferences or dislikes, the avoidance of certain food ingredients because of
their association with certain diseases, and so forth.
Information plays a crucial role for most of the issues in Figure 1.1, and for some of
the issues it is paramount. It is well documented that many animals instinctively know which
plants can cure diseases and also which plants/animals should be avoided. This is no longer
the case for human beings: we need knowledge to help us distinguish what is edible. In fact
human food is embedded in a culture of knowledge. Food in its different social contexts relies
heavily on knowledge, not so much about the food itself but on cultural traditions and habits.
However, consumers differ about which information they see as relevant; much of the
information that is provided simply goes unnoticed because it is not relevant to the
consumer’s purposes. To be sure, in order to estimate the impact of food intake on health
consumers need to be informed; but consumers have very different conceptions of health.
Furthermore, information is essential for consumer decision-making as it allows for
comparison between alternatives. The aim of making a comparison between different foods is
to arrive at a judgement about which is the best food. ‘Best’ depends, of course, on what
criteria one considers most important. Such a judgement cannot be made without information.
For the consumer who finds the ways and modes of production important, access to
relevant information is a key concern. It has already been said that some consumers, called
ethical consumers, have an interest in the ethical aspects of the production history of foods
(see Harrison et al., 2005). If consumers want to choose food on the basis of ethical
considerations, and to make informed food choices, it is necessary to make ethical information
on the production history of foods accessible to consumers. The core question that we look
into in this book is how ethical traceability can be linked to the idea and practice of informed
food choice.

The plan of the book

Regulations on food traceability are gradually being implemented worldwide. Research on
food traceability is increasing and so is the literature on traceability. Most food companies
either have implemented traceability schemes or are in the process of doing so. A great deal of
attention is given to the development of traceability schemes. New tracing techniques that
make use of computers, the internet or molecular tests serve to make tracing more efficient
and also to make it possible to include still more parameters, such as food quality or handling
during processing, and increasingly to include ethical dimensions. There is no doubt that

11
traceability has become a major issue in the creation of modern food policies and that it is an
issue that involves all actors in the food chain.
However, little attention has so far been paid to how traceability could be used to
‘trace’ ethical dimensions in the agri-food sector and thus address the consumer concerns
mentioned earlier in this chapter. This, therefore, is the key aim of this book: to address
existing (and possible future) links between traceability on the one hand and ethics on the
other. The authors of the book have explored in their research how traceability links to the
ethical questions and concerns of the agri-food sector. No less important is the question of
how traceability in the future could be related to ethical questions and concerns. Such
reflections on ethical traceability _ that is the tracing of ethical aspects of the food chain, and
how this process could be used to facilitate informed food choice _ have presented a common
and major challenge for all the authors.
The book has four parts, which represent four aspects of the link between traceability
and ethics.

Part I: Regulation, governance and narrative strategies of food traceability

Part I presents the broader policy and social contexts within which the development and
contemporary place of food traceability may be understood. It starts with the current status of
the regulation of food traceability, and goes on to discuss how food traceability regulation and
implementation have been developed through processes of governance. It ends with an
analysis of how traceability in the form of narratives is used by food companies in
advertising. In Chapter 2, Alessandro Arienzo, Christian Coff and David Barling offer an
analysis of the status of traceability in EU food law and regulation. The authors argue that the
democratizing potential of full agri-food traceability is missed. It is concluded that there is
potential for a more comprehensive mode of (ethical) traceability, which could open the way
for a more informed and participatory food system. David Barling in Chapter 3 examines the
governing and wider governance of food and food traceability. Contemporary agri-food
governance is portrayed as a process marked by both conflict and compromise, involving both
public (state) and private actors (from the corporate sector and from civil society). The multi-
level nature of agri-food governance frames the conflicts that have occurred over the
development of food traceability standards at the international level, illustrated by the
conflicts that have taken place in the Codex Alimentarius (Codex). In Chapter 4, Guido
Nicolosi and Michiel Korthals examine advertising strategies in selected Italian and Spanish
magazines and discuss how these make use of narratives that draw on the traceability of the
food in addressing consumers. Tradition, nature, geographical and cultural origins are almost
obsessively present in the advertisements examined. It is shown that the narrative strategies
relate to some substantive ethical concerns but not to the procedural concerns of consumers.

Part II: Ethical traceability case studies

Part II presents three case studies on traceability and ethical traceability in different food
supply chains. The case studies are: pigs into bacon in Denmark, wheat into bread in the UK,
and olives into olive oil in Greece. Each case study describes and analyses the current status
of traceability in the chain and looks at the extent to which ethical traceability is being
addressed and how it is being handled. The case studies present empirical data collected from
interviews with stakeholders and consumers from the three chains. The interviews included
questions about the 10 ethical concerns outlined earlier in this chapter, and about information
flows in the chains studied. The research found that some of these concerns are already
addressed by existing traceability or assurance schemes. In all three case studies it was found
that producers in the chain felt well supplied with information whereas consumers, by
contrast, felt that information was withheld and unreliable.

12
 In Chapter 5, Thorkild Nielsen and Niels Heine Kristensen describe how Danish
consumers feel a need for more information about bacon production practices, especially
about some of the invisible attributes, such as origin, use of medicine and animal welfare,
even though there is a long tradition for highly developed traceability systems. Traceability is
reactive in this chain and is not intended to transmit information on the safety, production
practices or quality of the final product proactively downstream to firms or end-consumers.
Rosalind Sharpe, David Barling and Tim Lang show, in Chapter 6, how traceability in the UK
wheat-bread chain is limited by the routine practice of blending wheat for convenient
handling and to manipulate quality and cost. However, some examples of traceability back to
farm were found. This chain, which is highly industrialized, is subject to many regulatory and
quasi-regulatory controls (such as the regulations governing the development of wheat
varieties, or the assurance schemes which impose quality standards on all wheat destined for
human consumption, from farm to mill) which incorporate traceability and which include
ethical dimensions. In Chapter 7, Agapi Vassiliou, Emmanouil Kabourakis and Dimitris
Papadopoulos explore the olive oil chain and describe how traceability and potentially ethical
traceability were widely said to be limited by the practice of blending oil by olive mills and
packing houses, in order to manipulate quality and cost or for convenience. The dominant
ethical concerns for stakeholders and consumers in the olive oil supply chain are trust and
transparency.

Part III:Ethical Traceability and its philosophical implications

for civil society, state, and markets
The philosophical studies all deal with the challenges and philosophical problems that the
notion of ethical traceability raises. Of course, not all these challenges and problems can be
solved here and disagreements are likely to persist. However, the chapters expose most of the
important challenges raised by ethical traceability, which deserve further attention and
reflection in the future. The studies do not stop at mapping and exposing the challenges; they
go on to present some of the ways in which ethical traceability could assist in solving
problems that face actors in all parts of the food chain, including consumers.
In Chapter 8, Christian Coff opens with a discussion of the challenges that ethical
traceability presents to common perceptions of the structural organization of society. Ethical
traceability breaks with many mainstream ideas about what should be considered as private
and public concerns. Implementing ethical traceability and informed food choice entails
creating new kinds of public spheres and a new kind of civil society. The two subsequent
chapters also address the tasks of the market (private) and the government (public). In
Chapter 9, Liesbeth Schipper asks whether the issue of animal welfare should be dealt with by
the market or by the government, and whether traceability should be used as a communication
tool or a government tool for improving animal welfare. In Chapter 10, Volkert Beekman also
examines what the roles of the market and government should be and links this to an analysis
of which kinds of ethical traceability could be justified from the perspective of liberal political
philosophy. In chapter 11, Michiel Korthals’s focus is on how consumer concerns can
democratically and practically be incorporated in the market and in food chains by
participatory methods. The concept of ‘Ethical Room for Manoeuvre’ is constructed to
specify the ethically desirable conditions under which the identification and weighing of
values and their dilemmas can be processed. Marco Castagna emphasizes in Chapter 12 that
tracing always involves interpretation. Interpretation by consumers, it is argued, opens up new
ways of consumer participation and involvement.

13
Part IV: Conclusions and outlook
Part IV opens with Chapter 13, where Volkert Beekman, Christain Coff, Michiel Korthals and
Liesbeth Schipper map different ways of providing information to consumers on ethical
traceability and establishing communication with consumers. Participative strategies are
discussed in the light of ethical traceability, and a three-step process is recommended which
involves (1) providing sound information to consumers; (2) facilitation of everyday dialogue
between consumers and producers; and (3) deeper engagement between dedicated consumer-
citizens and producers. In Chapter 14, Christian Coff, David Barling and Michiel Korthals
summarize the main conclusions and results of the book. The authors start with a presentation
of the main findings of the sociological investigations and the main conclusions of the
philosophical reflections. Implementing ethical traceability also entails problems, so the major
risks associated with ethical traceability are listed. The chapter ends with a set of
recommendations on how to develop the idea of ethical traceability in practice as well as in
future research.
Finally, two political speeches on ethical traceability are presented in an annex to Part
IV. Both speeches were presented at a conference entitled Ethical Traceability in the Food
Chain held in Brussels on 20 September 2006. The first speech is by Margaritis Schinas,
Head of Cabinet to Markus Kyprianou, Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection.
In the speech he presents the work and views of Directorate General Health and Consumer
Protection (DG SANCO) on consumers’ informed choice. The second speech, from Mariann
Fischer Boel, European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, addressed the
role of traceability, ethics and food quality in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.

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